Jiangsu universities co-sharpen disciplinary advantages

East China's Jiangsu province announced a list of alliances among local universities on June 26, highlighting their collaboration on discipline development.

The first batch of 10 alliances were formed covering fields such as pedagogy, medical science, pharmacy, mechanical engineering, math, physics, chemistry, and electronic science and technology.

These new links will encourage schools to integrate their resources and seek common development in student cultivation, faculty training and scientific studies, yielding concentrated and tangible results.

Jiangsu launched a provincial scheme in 2010 to strengthen local universities with characteristic and preponderant disciplines. The current alliances are part of the third phase of the scheme, which has engaged 226 disciplines and represents an investment of 7.52 billion yuan ($1.09 billion).

The day also saw Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education and tech giant Huawei sign an agreement to cooperate on cultivating professionals in the internet of things, big data and artificial intelligence.